Welcome to Lonely Homes

Lonely homes cost us all.

Help keep Greater Vancouver affordable.

We will include your lonely homes in our anonymized counts by neighbourhood.

What are we asking you to do?

It is very simple. If you have positively identified houses or strata units in your community that are not being lived in, then enter those addresses into the site.

We call these emtpy properties "lonely homes".

Please note we are summarizing these lonely homes by their postal code forward sorting area (FSA) to ensure anonymity and security of reported lonely homes.

Why are we doing this?

Lonely homes:

Inflate housing prices - Foreign buyers compete for homes and drive up prices well beyond the payscale of most British Columbians.

Raise property taxes - A higher home value means more property tax. Also, municipalities must provide services like water, sewer and garbage pick-up to vacant homes even if those services are not used. Municipalities could spend millions of tax dollars to build unnecessary infrastructure and services.

Increase theft and vandalism - Empty homes are an invitation to thieves and vandals and neighbourhoods with many vacant homes could be targeted for crime.

Contributes to homelessness - As fewer people can afford to buy homes there is more competition for rental units, causing rental rates to increase. Individuals and families who can no longer afford to rent, even minimum-wage earners, may become homeless.

Leads to loss of natural areas through urban sprawl - Homes that are not lived in and high house prices mean more homes built on the outskirts of communities. This urban sprawl leads to loss of natural areas that impacts wildlife.

Information is the first step towards positive change. We plan to make lonely home records available to municipal governments to help them make better policy decisions.